Revealing the Unknown Stories of the Philadelphia Region

More Pragmatism, Less Protocol

Written by Evan Peugh on May 28th, 2014

More Product, Less Process is a great way for putting our workflow into perspective in archives. Some tasks do not require a lot of detailed attention, and a cursory run-through along with some healthy description should suffice for making archival materials accessible. Other tasks may require a bit more work, but in the grand scheme of things will not suffer from the prioritization of other duties. MPLP is ideally suited for these types of situations, but when one is confronted with a stack of papers with no obvious relationship or readily determined content, more work is necessary. So what do we do when a collection contains records of both types?

Such was the case with the Martin I. J. Griffin Collection at the Philadelphia Archdiocesan Historical Research Center. Griffin was a Catholic historian during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and thus has some interesting research files. Some of these files easily fit into categories and can thus be minimally processed, but others are almost unusable without further item-level description and conservation. Examples include scrolls of brittle paper and assorted research files, all of which are written in Griffin’s cryptic handwriting, and these materials cannot be described further due to the time restraints of MPLP. We thus have a collection that is mostly processed, but I cannot call it complete until the miscellanea is dealt with.

Of course, we cannot simply abandon our working model every time we come across materials that are not suited to MPLP; we must press on! But in retrospect, what is best for such a collection is a synthesis of MPLP and standard item-level processing. Since there are two types of needs for these hybrid collections, we should use a hybrid working model. This type of synthesis does not come naturally in an administrative environment, however, since schedules are often designed around predictable processing rates.

Where does this leave us? I’m not sure, but I know that we must approach collections pragmatically, and address each collection’s specific need. MPLP, traditional processing, or both, we need to use whatever method is appropriate. This does not mean that processing projects will necessarily be designed to accommodate such circumstantial decision making. Nevertheless, within the confines of established procedure we can certainly try our hardest to act in the best interests of collections and vocalize our dissatisfaction when this proves insufficient.